Verisign Statement on .cc/.tv/IDN License Application Status in China

• By • • Domain Names

Verisign obtained licenses to provide domain name registry services for .com and .net in China in July 2016. As such, .com and .net domain name registrations are not affected.

Verisign is engaged in discussions with the Chinese government to obtain licenses to provide domain name registry services for .cc, .tv and our Chinese IDNs. We submitted our updated applications in July 2017. We expect to begin to engage in discussions with the Chinese government about our final evaluation and ultimately obtain licenses for .cc, .tv and our IDNs.

We will continue to distribute our products through the existing group of licensed registrars, which continue to process new .cc and .tv registrations: HiChina, Bizcn, Chinasource and 35 Tech. Renewals of existing .cc and .tv domain name registrations are not affected and will follow the standard renewal process. We view obtaining a license for our Chinese IDNs as a prerequisite to their launch.

Verisign Announces .닷컴 and .닷넷 Domain Names Are Now Available for General Registration

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Guest post from June Seo, Director, Verisign Naming Services Korea 

Today, Verisign is excited to announce that .닷컴 and .닷넷, the localized versions of the .com and .net top-level domains (TLDs) in Hangul script, are now open for the registration of domain names by the general public on a first-come, first-served basis, subject to availability and the applicable registry policies.* The General Registration Period for .닷컴 and .닷넷 began at 00:00:00 UTC on Aug. 30, 2016, following the Landrush Program Period.**

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Verisign Announces .コム Domain Names Are Now Available for Anyone to Register

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Guest post from Manish Dalal, Vice President, Verisign Naming Services, Asia-Pacific

Today, Verisign is excited to announce the General Registration Period for .コム – the .com you know, now in Japanese – during which anyone can register .コム domain names on a first-come, first-served basis, subject to availability and the applicable registry policies. The General Registration Period for .コム began at 00:00:00 UTC on June 13, 2016, following the Landrush Program Period.*

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Verisign Launches New gTLDs for the Korean Market, .닷컴 and .닷넷

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Guest post from June Seo, Director, Verisign Naming Services Korea

Verisign is pleased to announce the launch of our phased rollout of .닷컴 and .닷넷, the localized versions of the .com and .net top-level domains (TLDs) in Hangul script for the Korean market. The Sunrise Period is open from May 16, 2016 through June 19, 2016 for .닷컴, the .com you know, now in Korean, and .닷넷, the evolution of .net for Korea.

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Verisign Opens Landrush Program Period for .コム Domain Names

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Guest Post from Manish Dalal, Vice President, Verisign Naming Services, Asia-Pacific

Today, the Landrush Program Period for .コム, the first IDN TLD from Verisign, opens for anyone to register .コム domain names on a first come, first served basis through June 12, 2016. The Landrush Program Period provides businesses and individuals with the opportunity to register .コム domain names before they become generally available to the public on June 13, 2016.

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Priority Access Program for Verisign’s First IDN New gTLD, .コム

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Guest post from Manish Dalal, Vice President, Verisign Naming Services Asia 

Verisign launched its first IDN new gTLD, .コム – the .com you know, now in Japanese – on Dec. 9, 2015 at 12:00 a.m. UTC. We recently submitted updated TLD Startup Information for .コム to ICANN, extending the end date for the .コム Sunrise Period from Jan. 31, 2016, to March 14, 2016, and shifting the dates of the subsequent registration periods. ICANN recently confirmed the following updated registration periods for the .コム TLD*:

Sunrise Period: Dec. 9, 2015 – March 14, 2016

Priority Access Program Period: March 15 – May 15, 2016

Landrush Program Period: May 16 – June 12, 2016

General Registration Period: Start Date June 13, 2016

Trademark Claims Period: June 13 – Sept. 11, 2016

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Launch of Verisign’s First IDN New gTLD, .コム

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Guest post from Manish Dalal, Vice President, Verisign Naming Services Asia

The composition of the Internet’s population continues to evolve toward a more localized Web. Asia has been leading the way forward as the populations in that region come online and begin creating and consuming content in their local languages. According to Internet World Stats, over 48 percent of all Internet users are located in Asia and, according to W3Techs, approximately 45 percent of all websites in the world are in a language other than English.

Still, navigation of the Internet through a URL is primarily in English. Therefore, by enabling more end users to navigate the Internet in scripts representing their native language, and giving more companies the ability to maintain a common brand identity across many scripts, Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs) have the potential to make the Internet more accessible and thus more usable to end users around the world. This accessibility is why IDNs have generated considerable attention since Verisign introduced IDNs at the second-level in 2000.

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What’s Really New in the New gTLD Space?

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As someone who has long studied trends in the domain name industry, the opening of hundreds of new gTLDs has intrigued me for quite some time on many levels. One question I found myself pondering was: Will new gTLDs create “new” naming trends or redundant domains across many TLDs? With more than 3 million domains delegated in the new TLD space there is now a corpus to study to answer this question.

The short answer is clear from these first two pie charts which illustrate the percentage of the second-level domains (SLDs) that were available in .com as of 12/15/2014:

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Verisign Delegates Four New gTLDs to the Root Zone

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Guest post from Pat Kane, Senior Vice President, Naming and Directory Services

On Oct. 23, 2013, at approximately 11:00 a.m. EDT, Verisign received authorization instructions from the U.S. Department of Commerce National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) to delegate four new gTLDs into the root zone, which we are responsible for maintaining per the Cooperative Agreement between Verisign and NTIA. Verisign acted in accordance with our contractual obligation and delegated these TLDs into the root zone at 2:33 p.m. EDT the same day.

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Update on Verisign’s IDN Implementation Plans

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The composition of the internet’s population has seen a dramatic shift over the last two decades. In 1996, the majority of end users were based in the U.S.; according to a 2012 Comscore report, the non-English speaking internet population has grown to 87 percent, with more than 40 percent based in the Asia-Pacific region. In order to embrace this population shift, we believe the internet must become multilingual so it can be accessible and relevant to the majority of end users today.

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